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Smart Storage for the Pantry/Laundry

The last few weeks, Ben and I have been working on the pantry/laundry room. We have covered the walls and ceiling in bead board panels, and installed shelf brackets with pine planks as floating shelves on the wall above our fabulous orange-and-yellow ReStore cabinet score. We have lots more to do—a hack of three IKEA Billy bookcases above the washer and dryer as wall cabinets (we hope it works!), trimming the room and covering the panels’ seams in barnwood, and more—but here’s a look at our progress:

I’m convinced that packing this hardworking room with lots of smart storage is key to our living well in the farm house’s 800 square-foot main floor with no closets or hiding places. Utilizing the small bank of adopted cabinets (that just happen to fit perfectly between the wall and fridge), adding a countertop (for now, a cut-to-fit-and-sanded piece of OSB), and wrapping the fridge with shelves of various depths (18+ inches deep up high for big stuff; 14-inch and 10-inch for keeping oft-used items within easy reach) are a huge part of the plan. The room’s opposite wall’s makeover is underway now and you’ll get a look at it soon!

So far, you’ve seen the pantry side of the room. But keeping the laundry in check is important, too. We recently added a super-space-saving element to help with my personal laundry habits: an over-the-dooor bamboo drying rack.

I hang the vast majority of my laundry to dry, using the electric dryer for cotton tough stuff such as socks, workout t-shirts, bed linens, and towels. And for fluffing up and “ironing,” of course! So having a place to hang items when the outdoor clothes line isn’t an option (read: dead of winter, pouring rain, etc), is paramount.

After scouring my online go-to spots and not able to find the just-right thing, I found this over-the-door rack on Home Depot. I showed it to Ben, saying that I liked it and wanted to figure out how we could use it on the wall, rather than on the door. We finally landed on hanging the rack on the window trim. This way, when flat, the rack it totally out of the way, tucked within the window frame. When extended and in action, the rack extends over the electric drier so it doesn’t eat up too much space in the room. The best part is that it doesn’t claim any wall space, so if/when we add more shelves or cabinets, we won’t have to work around the laundry rack. Win-win!

We removed the window’s barnwood trim to install the beadboard wall covering.